Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

We sure do get alot of christian fruits.

[Pat Mustard]

Grand Nudger: from what ive gathered about the term "atheism", i believe it only means a disbelief in idols, what i think youve called "narrative devices".  i believe this agrees with Christianity; it speaks against idolatry too, the worship of anything we can see or detect.  by "narrative device", i think you mean that it is only a reference to a much larger something "behind the scene."  as a Christian, i believe this is true, up to and including Christ himself.  so i think that, basically, God is the good that these devices have been referencing.

You're very wrong about atheism, it's even in the name "a-" standing for anti, meaning against, disbelieving, etc. and "theism" being the belief in god.

Oh and christianity is very much about idols. god is an idol to the psyche of a spoiled toddler and Jesus contains millions of different idols within him, it all depends on who you're talking which idol is appearing currently.

[LinuxGal]

Grand Nudger: from what ive gathered about the term "atheism", i believe it only means a disbelief in idols, what i think youve called "narrative devices".  i believe this agrees with Christianity; it speaks against idolatry too, the worship of anything we can see or detect.  by "narrative device", i think you mean that it is only a reference to a much larger something "behind the scene."  as a Christian, i believe this is true, up to and including Christ himself.  so i think that, basically, God is the good that these devices have been referencing.

You're very wrong about atheism, it's even in the name "a-" standing for anti, meaning against, disbelieving, etc. and "theism" being the belief in god.

Oh and christianity is very much about idols.  god is an idol to the psyche of a spoiled toddler and Jesus contains millions of different idols within him, it all depends on who you're talking which idol is appearing currently.

The "a-" prefix more properly applies to that which is not applicable.  Think of amorality.   A rock or a robot are not immoral, they are  amoral. A gnostic knows and an agnostic does not know.  So we say a person who insists there is no god is an anti-theist but a person who concludes a god has not been demonstrated to exist is an atheist.

[The Grand Nudger]

Both atheists. Anti-theism is a different thing, and we wouldn't want to push anti-theism onto people who do not hold the position, most gnostic atheists not being anti-theists. It's believing contemporary being mal-theism. It's the idea that theistic gods and their beliefs systems are fundamentally broken and harmful. As chris hitchens put it - Who but a slave would want them to be true?

[LinuxGal]

Both atheists.  Anti-theism is a different thing, and we wouldn't want to push anti-theism onto people who do not hold the position, most gnostic atheists not being anti-theists.  It's believing contemporary being mal-theism.  It's the idea that theistic gods and their beliefs systems are fundamentally broken and harmful.

I'm anti-theist in relation to the god described in the Bible (due to the massive number of contradictions in that description) and atheist in relation to other gods.

[The Grand Nudger]

Anti-theism isn't a position about just one god or about contradictions in magic books. It's a moral appraisal of a type of belief that isn't wholly exhausted by the set of abrahamist beliefs, but does include them.

Beliefs in personal and intervening gods. It sounds like you're just an atheist, and, this coming from a pretty aggressive antitheist, you probably wouldn't want to describe yourself as one unless you want to assume the baggage that comes with it. It's a hefty set of frequently unpopular opinions, even amongst other atheists, lol. The simplest way to explain the difference is that for many atheists, were a god to show up on their doorstep that would be significantly modifying of their positions. To an antitheist, it would just be a tuesday.

[Pat Mustard]

Mister Agenda: i understand.  Christ didnt say to hate our families, though: he said to love him more than our families.  if we put our family above all things,  we fall into sin quickly because that's rooted in bias and favoritism, which isnt the truth: everyone should be treated equally.  by loving Christ first, we will deal with our families the same way we would all others.

So the solution to bias is an even worse bias? How can you not see how stupid christainity wants its followers to be?

[Pat Mustard]

What do you base that on? Simply because Jesus didn’t write doesn’t necessarily mean that he couldn’t write. 

While the overall literacy rate in Roman Judea/Palestine was probably around 3%, that of adult males Jews in cities and towns has been estimated to be as high as 20-25%.

Boru

I base it upon what is recorded in the Gospels, namely, Mark, Chapter 1.

How is it that Paul's letters survived?

Dawn

Paul's letters didn't survive, we've four different authors for the Pauline epistles, none of whom can be convincingly linked with the original Saul of Tarsus.

[polymath257]

[quote='polymath257' pid='2121261' dateline='1665704924']
Well, the argument is that the complexity is such that no natural system could produce what we observe. 

That's not at all the argument. Your formulation above in bold is clearly a negative assertion, and negative assertions generally can't be proven. All variants of the design arguments are either analogical (e.g. the universe is analogous to intelligently designed machines + the analogy is strong enough to warrant a designer of the universe) or inductive (the designer hypothesis is a better explanation of available data than all competing hypotheses).

You're also making the implicit assumption that natural selection and the design hypothesis/theism are incompatible, needless to say that you need to provide very good justification of such an assumption.
[\quote]

No, I am not. At the point that mutation and natural selection can produce the observed complexity, the God assumption simply becomes irrelevant.

If you want, the God assumption can be seen as an assumption that is neither provable nor disprovable from the earlier assumptions. But then, no argument from design would be necessary.

In general, giving evidence of design isn't as easy as many seem to think. Among other things, it requires knowing enough of what can happen *without* intelligent interference to justify the necessity of such interference. On the other hand, it is often found that things that initially *look* designed can actually be the result of natural processes.

So the upshot is that the 'look around' argument simply doesn't get to the conclusion.

I can say the exact same thing about evidence of walls existing, or any other basic belief that we acquire through perception. In short, your objections to the appearance of design invariably lead to skepticism.

And, again, you're assuming that something being the result of natural processes explains away design. You need to actually justify the explaining away -the option of guided evolution is always available to the theist, so you basically did nothing to refute the design argument.

And at that point, design becomes an unprovable and can be dispensed with.

Yes, and what is wrong is that AI robots do not reproduce with mutations and are not subject to natural selection.

So, your only objection to my parody analogy is that AI robots don't reproduce ...........? We already have self-replicating malware that can modify its behavior to avoid detection (look up polymorphic virus), does that mean such malware doesn't warrant a programmer who wrote the malware ?
 
and let's say we managed to produce AI robots that can reproduce and can evolve through natural selection, does that mean we never existed .......?

No, but more than their mere existence and complexity would be required to prove our existence.

My point is that the argument from design is incapable of proving its conclusion. You are, in essence, arguing the contrapositive.

Actually, I would say that the existence of something is ultimately determined by whether it can be detected in principle. So, yes, the detection of the wall through the senses is *precisely* why I believe they exist. It is part of the definition I use for 'existence'.

And your definition is plainly ridiculous. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. That something is undetectable just means we can't detect it, and that empirical observation isn't enough to justify the assertion that it exists.

But there are times when absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. For example, if I fail to detect an adult african elephant in my room, I can conclude that there is no adult african elephant in my room. Why? Because if such an elephant existed in my room, I would be guaranteed to detect it. So, in that case, absence of evidence *is* indeed evidence of absence.

But going deeper, if the detection is impossible even in principle, what does it even mean to say that something exists? I could then equally well argue that undetectable unicorns exist in my room. Who is to say otherwise?

if it is silly to say that there are undetectable unicorns in my room, then it is equally silly to say that anything else that it truly undetectable can be said to exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

The amusing bit, is that these fairies are only undetectable in particular circumstances, rounding down to failure. It's not really the case that the nutters think their pet gods aren't detectable, and you can tell that for a fact as an observable phenomena..... when they make evidentiary arguments to the effect of their existence.